


like a sun that never sets

by Drbwho



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-07-28 07:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20060044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drbwho/pseuds/Drbwho
Summary: Steve goes back.





	like a sun that never sets

_i hear a train that'll take me some place_

_farther from the shore_

_don't hold your breath waiting for me_

_‘cause the ocean needs you more_

_leave all your bags, and head for the water_

_chase the lies into the sea_

_don't hold your breath waiting for me_

_‘cause I may never come home_

Captain America feels no loss, and perhaps that’s why he doesn’t feel much like the Man With The Plan anymore. He feels like Steve Rogers before the serum, unable to take a deep breath without the fear it might be his last; the rot of the infirm seeping out of his pores despite the fight he had in him to keep going. At least he’d had a hale and whole Bucky then. At least he’d had Peggy, for a while.

In the end, the decision doesn’t feel as painful as it should. There_ is_ pain, but the ache he feels is years old and nothing new, despite the rawness tearing around the edges, the old festering against the fresh. Perhaps it is a weakness, but he thinks it might be the resolve of the weary instead; he feels every one of his years in his bones and in his mind. In his heart.

He tells Bucky his plan. He was never good at hiding the truth from him anyway. Even when they were children, when they were young men, when they were soldiers, they could see each other’s tells and ticks, truths and less-than-truths. To say he is happy about his path would be a lie he tells himself, but he can rest easy to know Bucky _understands_ why he has to do it. They’ve known each other for too long, been through too much, for him not to respect his decisions, barring anything that impedes on his ability to live a long and healthy life.

And anyway, don’t they both deserve it? Doesn’t the world, _the universe_, owe them both a second chance? 

The night before he goes they spend talking, waxing nostalgic, ignoring their mobile phones and televisions and locking out the steady beeping of cars and the constant thrum of city sounds. They’ve secluded themselves in the Brooklyn apartment Bucky had found for himself after everyone came back, and if it wasn’t for the cares around their eyes and the hard lines of their mouths it could have been 70 years ago. It might have been before the war, when their most pressing concerns included how to pay for their next meal, and what sort of job Steve could take that was easy on his fragile health. It might have been the night Bucky asked Steve what kind of girl he thought he’d settle down with, prodding as if he thought Steve would make it to 30 until he almost believed it himself.

Bucky doesn’t remember everything from their past, but he remembers enough. 

Steve wishes it was enough. 

He takes a swig of the beer that won’t make him feel a thing, and when was the last time he felt? Was it Thanos shredding his shield as if he held cardboard, a child playacting a superhero? Was it during Tony’s final breath, calm and quiet and nothing like the vibrant man had been while living?

Bucky catches onto his melancholy; he’s carrying plenty of it himself. His hand, the real one, rests gently against his shoulders. The left one hangs against the couch, forgotten. “What will you do when you get there?”

There’s a smile, or a ghost of one at least. He doesn’t look up. “You can guess.”

Bucky’s grip firms just a little. “Don’t want to guess.”

“You know, Buck.” He does meet his eyes, then. “I’m gonna save you.”

[There are things, later, that Bucky knows he should have said._ I don’t need saving. I’m right here, Steve. Stay here, stay. Stay._

What he says instead, is nothing. What good is something as broken as he is?]

He keeps it from Sam, and from Bruce. No one else even suspects, and that’s when he feels truly resolute. There might be guilt that floats into his mind later, but he’s done a good job convincing himself it’s the right call to make when he steps onto the platform, trees creaking near-silently around him as the wind blows, cool and clean. He’ll miss it, as overwhelming as it felt at times, as if he'd starting a book right in the middle and was expected to crawl his way through; he has friends here. He’d felt, for a while, that he’d carved a strange family from all this.

Nat would have known. She might have known before he’d fully made up his own mind. There might have been a look, a raised eyebrow or a twitch of the corner of her mouth, and he would _know_ she knew, wordlessly. 

God, he misses her. 

It would have been a challenge before, to keep his decision locked tight inside, the wrongness of a lie ready to burst out of him. It’s strange how it’s seamless now; the deception is fluid around his limbs as he walks, as he loosely grips a hammer that isn’t his and a box of unstoppable power. It’s impossible to believe the weight the stones carry for the lightness of them; he will never forget the cost.

The world around him is full of hope, brimming with renewed vigor and life and love. All he can taste is blood and ash. 

He has a plan, now. He will take back what he lost.

*

The stones are the easy part, but that story comes later. Now, now he has nearly infinite possibilities, millions of worlds he’d happily spend his days traveling to if it means he is saving the people he loves from a second of pain.

He starts where he can: right where he needs to.

His weapon is his knowledge of what is to come, the power to mend the fracturing edges that broke apart in his future. The first branch grows around him, a pull away from what he knows and where he has been. Time is nothing to him now, and what does the passing of years truly mean to someone who slept, unknowing, into a new world? Perhaps that is the primary cause for the absence of fear as he moves into his past; perhaps he has forgotten terror altogether.

[Another lie; he remembers fear; a plane, a train, a helicarrier, a missed dance, an end of a line.]

The war is over now, and steps lead him to a house he doesn’t yet know; this is after his time and Captain America is years dead and gone. He wonders, heart rate creeping upward slightly, if he has chosen the wrong year, the wrong time, if it is already too late. Maybe Hydra has sprouted too many heads to stamp out. For a moment, or several, his thoughts divide and spread, uncoordinated and clumsy.

_Peggy, Bucky, Hydra_. He looks forward a hundred years and can see the fruit of all their labor, the careful calculations rent wide and open while he slept in the ice. But not so now; he is _(was?)_ here and not, resting in a frozen plane and meant to suspend forever but also lucid and crisp, carrying knowledge no one should have so readily, but prepared to use it against the evil he had given his life to annihilate. He has time, He can finish this before it begins again.

He opens the door.

* 

Bucky used to do this…this _thing_ with his left hand.

A motion, when he was uncomfortable or tired or bored; fingers flitting one after the other along the tip of his thumb or the nearest surface to play against.

Index, middle, ring, pinky, ring middle, index. A comfort, a lullaby.

Maybe he didn’t even need a reason most times for the movements; a restless pulsing of someone who was meant for more, and wasn’t he? Steve knew even then he wasn’t made to be the poor kid who ended up no better than their parents; either stuck at the same no-wage jobs or worse, unblinking eyes open toward the sky in a foxhole with flies circling a lax and open mouth. 

He could feel those fingers even now, a ghost tapping between his shoulder blades or heard against the wooden desk at school until the warning rap of a ruler stilled them. 

Afterward, after Hydra and the endless string of decades half frozen and half thawed, Bucky was as still as the dead. A stone, unmoving until blatant intention or need commanded it, and didn’t that just make him the perfect and silent weapon? It unsettled Steve, even if he didn’t know why or refused to admit it to himself.

He tried once, to press the pads of his own fingers along the soldier’s right arm, to remind him of what he used to be (and isn’t that a pathetic thing, a selfish thing, to force the past onto a man who longs to move ahead?). Almost instantly that flesh was wrenched away, the contact appearing to be too much as James Barnes swiftly broke contact, leaving Steve to his troubled, guilty thoughts. 

*

Captain America does it now, _tap tap tap_ along his thumb, as he waits for Peggy.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to everyone who wasn't expecting a weird character study of Steve and Bucky from me. Oops.  
Also this is a bit disjointed until the plot settles in so...


End file.
